When we travel by airplane, the pressure changes. What does that mean exactly? Why does it make my ears hurt?
Equally, deep sea diving and submersibles. Ive read that the glass has to be massively reinforced to stand the pressure. Is the change in pressure the same type for air and sea? I.e does pressure increase for both?
Edit; Everyone did great! I understand now! The answer is “Water be heavy” and “Air be heavy. Less air above you when you fly so less pressure”
In: 13
There’s quite a lot of atmosphere above you. Depending on how you define it, some 80 to 100km of it. All that air has weight, and that weight is pushing in on your body from all sides. That is the air pressure at sea level, just the weight of all the air above you pressing in on you.
When you fly higher, there is now less air above you so the pressure gets lower. But the pressure inside your ear hasn’t changed. There’s now air pressing from the inside of your ear which makes it hurt.
With the ocean, it’s similar, but… Water is much heavier than air is, so as you dive deeper the pressure rises much much faster, in fact, for every 10 meters you dive the pressure increases by about 1 atmosphere (the air pressure at sea level). So just diving 100 meters down, means your submarine needs to be 10 times as strong as it would need on the surface.
It’s almost exactly the same as the water pressure thing, with the main difference being that water pressure increases at a rate of 1 atmosphere of pressure every 10 meters, while for air, you get 1 atmosphere of pressure for ~500 kilometers of air.
Pressure increases the deeper in a fluid you go. At sea level, you are on the bottom of the atmosphere, so there you have the highest pressure.
In a plane, you go up 30,000 feet, so you’re no longer as deep, and so you don’t have as much pressure pushing in on you. The ear popping is a consequence of that, because the pressure inside your body no longer has as much pushing against it, so it can push out more, popping your ears.
If you lift something with your arms and put it on top of your head, you can feel its weight and the pressure it exerts on your head.
Air exists and has weight even though you can’t see it. When you go to higher altitudes, such as flying in an airplane, there is less air and it becomes less dense. As a result, the air pressure exerted on your body decreases compared to ground level.
When you dive into the ocean, you feel the pressure of the water on your body. As you dive deeper, the pressure increases due to the weight of the water above you.
Everything has weight, including water and air. If you put a bucket water on your chest, it’s gonna weigh 10 pounds or so. You put a barrel of water on your chest, it’s gonna weigh a lot more. When you swim 10 feet down to the bottom of a pool, you have 10 feet of water above you. The weight of all that water is pushing on your body. That weight is what you feel pushing on your ear drums. If you plug your nose and blow, you increase the amount of air trapped in your sinuses and inner ear, which increases the pressure, which balances the push of the water on your ear drum, so you no longer feel it.
Air is exactly the same. At sea level, you have the whole atmosphere above you, and the weight of all that air is pushing on you, exactly as the water in the pool does. When you 10,000 feet up on a mountain, that’s about two miles less air above you. That’s less weight pushing on you, which changes the balance of pressure between the outside and the air trapped in your sinuses/inner ear. So you exchange some air with the outside to equalize that pressure, and the balance returns.
Airplanes are pressurized to approximately the equivalent of 10,000 feet. So the pressure in there is about the same as what you’d experience at the top of a mountain. So, it feels the same as if you were atop that mountain. You get on the plane, and your body is pressurized to ground level, and then the airplane exposes you to mountain-top pressure. You gotta equalize that pressure to fix the imbalance on your eardrum, just like on a mountain, just like at the bottom of a pool.
The exact amount of the change in pressure differs, but the basic way it works is the same way.
Imagine you have perfectly stackable ice cubes. They all weigh the same, 1 unit. They all are measured 1 length a side. Each face is one square length, each cube is 1 cubic length.
(I’m not going to use actual measures just to keep things general. If you want to use “inch” or “centimetre” for “length”, or “gram” or “ounce” for “unit”, go for it.)
One ice cube on a flat surface puts the weight of 1 unit over a 1 square length area.
Stack an ice cube on top. Now, you’ve got two units on an area of 1 square length.
Pressure is weight over area. That’s it. So with two ice cubes pressing onto the 1 square length area, there’s double the pressure. Keep stacking ice cubes, keep increasing the pressure.
Air has weight, just like the ice cubes do. When you go further up in the sky, there’s less air pressing down. Less stuff, fewer ice cubes, less pressure.
Your ear feels funky because the inside of your head has pressure pushing back against the outside. Ears have sensitive parts that can detect those small changes of pressure since changes in pressure are also how sound is transmitted.
And when you go underwater? Not only do you have all the air pressing down, but now you’ve got all that water too. Water is heavy.
It’s almost exactly the same as the water pressure thing, with the main difference being that water pressure increases at a rate of 1 atmosphere of pressure every 10 meters, while for air, you get 1 atmosphere of pressure for ~500 kilometers of air.
Pressure increases the deeper in a fluid you go. At sea level, you are on the bottom of the atmosphere, so there you have the highest pressure.
In a plane, you go up 30,000 feet, so you’re no longer as deep, and so you don’t have as much pressure pushing in on you. The ear popping is a consequence of that, because the pressure inside your body no longer has as much pushing against it, so it can push out more, popping your ears.
It’s almost exactly the same as the water pressure thing, with the main difference being that water pressure increases at a rate of 1 atmosphere of pressure every 10 meters, while for air, you get 1 atmosphere of pressure for ~500 kilometers of air.
Pressure increases the deeper in a fluid you go. At sea level, you are on the bottom of the atmosphere, so there you have the highest pressure.
In a plane, you go up 30,000 feet, so you’re no longer as deep, and so you don’t have as much pressure pushing in on you. The ear popping is a consequence of that, because the pressure inside your body no longer has as much pushing against it, so it can push out more, popping your ears.
If you lift something with your arms and put it on top of your head, you can feel its weight and the pressure it exerts on your head.
Air exists and has weight even though you can’t see it. When you go to higher altitudes, such as flying in an airplane, there is less air and it becomes less dense. As a result, the air pressure exerted on your body decreases compared to ground level.
When you dive into the ocean, you feel the pressure of the water on your body. As you dive deeper, the pressure increases due to the weight of the water above you.
If you lift something with your arms and put it on top of your head, you can feel its weight and the pressure it exerts on your head.
Air exists and has weight even though you can’t see it. When you go to higher altitudes, such as flying in an airplane, there is less air and it becomes less dense. As a result, the air pressure exerted on your body decreases compared to ground level.
When you dive into the ocean, you feel the pressure of the water on your body. As you dive deeper, the pressure increases due to the weight of the water above you.
There’s quite a lot of atmosphere above you. Depending on how you define it, some 80 to 100km of it. All that air has weight, and that weight is pushing in on your body from all sides. That is the air pressure at sea level, just the weight of all the air above you pressing in on you.
When you fly higher, there is now less air above you so the pressure gets lower. But the pressure inside your ear hasn’t changed. There’s now air pressing from the inside of your ear which makes it hurt.
With the ocean, it’s similar, but… Water is much heavier than air is, so as you dive deeper the pressure rises much much faster, in fact, for every 10 meters you dive the pressure increases by about 1 atmosphere (the air pressure at sea level). So just diving 100 meters down, means your submarine needs to be 10 times as strong as it would need on the surface.
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